Having sailed on boats from 7 to over 300 feet, I tend to think of my
sailing experience as being fairly broad. I never thought about it
until today but, while it may be broad, there is a big hole in the
middle.

Most of my command time is in boats under 30 feet, small and light
enough to just manhandle around while docking and undocking. Pull up
to the dock, jump off, grab the rail, boat stops. My experience in
larger boats has all been as crew and most of those boats have been 60
feet and over so everything was done with well orchestrated line
handling and power.

We just moved to our permanent dock which is longer and narrower than
the temporary one we were on. The boat will not back out now without
the stern walking far enough that we’ll hit the boat on the other side
of the slip (mercifully, it hasn’t shown up yet but I’m trying to keep
the space inviolate for practice). My crew is small enough in stature
that our 32 footer might as well be one of the big sail training
vessels I’m familiar with as far as fending off or hauling the bow or
stern in with a dock line is concerned.

I lay awake the other night trying to think how we were going to get
out of the slip the next morning. I asked myself what they would do on
the schooner "Westward". Simple.

The next day, I explained the maneuver to the kids and guests. I then
set a stern spring planning to back against it to pull the stern in
and the bow out before casting off the spring. This would turn the
boat enough in the slip that she would have to straighten out in
backing and about double the distance I could back before the stern
swung too far.

I called for the bow line to be let go and put the engine in reverse.
Nothing happened. The engine ran and there was some thrashing under
the counter but the boat didn’t move. More power, nothing. It was dead
calm but the boat simply would not turn. I used about as much RPM as
the prop will absorb in bollard pull conditions and the boat still
didn’t turn. I finally said the hell with it, cast off the spring, and
we backed out taking a huge imaginary chunk out of the rail of our
mythical slip mate as we went.

The bottom line is that 15 horsepower in reverse through a two blade
prop on a heavy 32 foot boat isn’t going to do squat in fancy line
maneuvers. I’m going to have to make sure I always invite some big
guests for every sail or think of something else.

How do you do it?

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Roger Long